Cleric vows death before surrender

A Pakistani cleric besieged in a mosque in Islamabad has
declared that he and his followers would rather die than surrender
as police stormed a seminary linked to the mosque and arrested
dozens of students.

Gunmen earlier fired on President Pervez Musharraf's plane with
anti-aircraft guns in an attack officials said had possible links
to the mosque stand-off.

Musharraf was unharmed in the incident yesterday when shots were
fired at his aircraft as he flew from a military base to visit
flood-hit southern Pakistan.

Abdul Rashid Ghazi, deputy leader of the pro-Taliban Red Mosque,
vowed not to give himself up to government forces as the bloody
confrontation which has already claimed 19 lives entered a fifth
day with fresh clashes which sent flames and smoke rising above the
mosque.

The government had rejected a conditional surrender offer by
Ghazi, whose brother Abdul Aziz was captured on Wednesday while
trying to flee the mosque dressed in a burqa.

"We have decided that we can be martyred but we will not
surrender. We are ready for our heads to be cut off but we will not
bow to them," Ghazi told the private Geo television station
yesterday.

In a major development early today, police seized control of a
seminary run by clerics from the embattled mosque to prevent
radical students opening up a second front in the stand-off.

"Police stormed into Jamia Faridia and arrested dozens of
students and shifted them to an unknown place," a senior security
official said.

Aziz was the principal of the Jamia Faridia, which police
described as the "powerhouse" for the Red Mosque, with several
students involved in the confrontation three kilometres away.

"It is serious blow to the Red Mosque cleric (Ghazi) and will
further weaken his position," the official said.

Fresh gunfire and blasts also erupted at the Red Mosque after a
seven-hour lull but officials said security forces had not stormed
it yet.

"We are not making any advances, this is part of the operation
to secure the release of women and children held hostage by the
cleric," a security official said.

Militant students lobbed grenades and petrol bombs at the
security forces, who responded by firing, he added.

Ghazi has refused to meet a delegation of religious leaders and
MPs trying to seek evacuation of stranded children inside a
seminary at the mosque, saying he could not do so because of his
"security plan".

Earlier, two heavy blasts rocked the mosque, blowing big chunks
of debris, believed to be part of its perimeter wall, high above
the surrounding treetops.

A mosque official said four students were killed in the clash
when a mortar fired by security forces hit a room in the mosque,
with more casualties in an earlier skirmish.

During a lunchtime relaxation of the shoot-on-sight curfew in
force around the complex, militants shot and wounded a man coming
to see his daughter inside an Islamic school attached to the
mosque, officials said.

Hundreds of Islamic students are still inside the mosque
compound, along with up to 60 "hardcore" armed militants, officials
have said.

Musharraf had earlier ordered that no military action should be
taken until women and children were out of the mosque, but repeated
that only an unconditional surrender was acceptable.

Ghazi and Aziz have both denied that anyone was being kept
against their will.

Aziz urged his followers to give themselves up on Thursday in a
bizarre interview with state television conducted while wearing the
burqa in which he was captured.

Musharraf, a key US ally who is facing a political crisis ahead
of elections later this year after ousting the country's chief
justice, has received a popularity boost at home since finally
cracking down on the mosque.

The clerics led a vigilante morality campaign in Islamabad,
which included the abduction of police officers and people accused
of running brothels, as well as raids on music and DVD shops.

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